"The list of nominees for this year’s Oscars is nothing if not thorough. In the Best Picture category alone there are 10 nominees. And yet in my view, as self-designated voting member of the non-existent Hollywood (North) Foreign Press, there is one significant oversight. The award for Best New Place to See a Movie (and Grab a Drink, Take in an Exhibition and Get Dinner While You’re At It) should go to… our very own TIFF Bell Lightbox

It’s funny, but after a decade of very public fund-raising, with the Toronto International Film Festival’s brass repeatedly making its case for a “home” for the festival, when it finally opened in September to great public fanfare, complete with rapper K’naan, free cupcakes and a bouncy castle on King Street, none of us really knew what to make of the Lightbox. Was it the Festival’s offices? Some sort of film education centre/museum? Were ordinary citizens who weren’t in the film industry permitted inside its perfect glass box? And if so, what exactly did one do in there?

I am proud to report that the veil has been lifted. Unlike many people I know, I finally went to see a movie there (yes, it shows movies), and the experience was so stylish and so superb that not only have I been back several times since but I fear I am developing a dangerous Lightbox addiction because now it seems I don’t want to go anywhere else. In fact it’s so good I almost didn’t write about it for fear of letting too many in on my secret."

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